Subject: [Tweeters] Washington Birder List Reporting
Date: Jan 9 12:38:22 2013
From: Washington Birder - info at wabirder.com


Washington Birder may be an unfamiliar name to many of you, but while doing some research yesterday, I realized that when the 2012 Washington Birder List Report is published this year, it will be for the 20th consecutive year. Many of the original 1992 List Reporters are still participating, but we've added many new enthusiasts throughout the years. The first List Report was only 2 pages long. Last years List Report was 24 pages.


Washington Birder began as a subscription newsletter in 1993 by Scott Ray and Ken Knittle. Because the emphasis of Washington Birder was county birding, the List Report was started. After individual County Checklists had been developed with the help of many, many persons, we produced a spreadsheet titled: Birds in Washington State: a county comparison and then began documenting and publishing "County Firsts".

All four of these tools are still available for your use on the Washington Birder website: http://wabirder.com/index.html

List Reports: http://wabirder.com/online.html

County Checklists: http://wabirder.com/county_map.html

Birds in Washington State: a county comparison: http://wabirder.com/birds_in_wastate.html (Click the underlined title to access the spreadsheet)

County Firsts: http://wabirder.com/county_firsts.html (The map on this page is currently under construction. This spring, there will soon be a link to each county on the map with a spreadsheet listing species and documenting as many county first dates as we are aware of.)




We would like to thank Michael Hobbs, who took over as webmaster several years ago. His help allows us to continue to provide content on the website.

Thanks also to Matt Bartels. Matt initially took data from our checklists and created a spreadsheet: http://wabirder.com/bartel_co_checklist.htmlthat is a colored coded version of our original "Birds in Washington State: a county comparison" AND also a excel county checklist. We continue to send Matt updates (county firsts and code changes) each time we finish updating County Checklists and he adds that information to his spreadsheet.


Matt has also enhanced county birding participation with the Washington State County Yearlist Project: http://wabirder.com/bartel.html
What a great project! Of course, Matt could not do this project without the help of the county compilers, who we also want to thank for their time and dedication.
Washington Birder uses the data from Matt's Washington State Yearlist Project as one tool to help identify "County Firsts" and also to provide annual data comparison for code adjustments.

If you use the website or any of the tools mentioned above, please help us keep them up-to-date by reporting "County Firsts" - both new and especially missing species on the lists, generally from older sightings and pointing out where codes are outdated.


Finally, updated Checklist, Spreadsheet and County Firsts will be up on the web soon and they include all sightings into we received through the end of December 2012.

Laurie Knittle


Ken and Laurie Knittle/Washington Birder
Vancouver, Wa
wabirder.com
info at wabirder.com